Michael Caine, The Island, 1980. Jaws author Peter Benchley chose Caine on hearing an exec's wife talking about the terrible Swarm. “If he can carry that, he can carry this.”

John Thaw, The Grass Is Greener, Sweden-Zambia, 1980. First duo for the Doris Lessing novel in 1978, Hopkins-Glenda Jackson, became Thaw-Karen Black.

Ian McKellan, Priest of Love, 1981. Too busy (with a new agent) to play DH Lawrence.

Ben Kingsley, Gandhi, 1981.

His Magic director Richard Attenborough asked Hopkins in 1973 and again after directing him in Magic, 1978. “That really got to my ego, my vanity. I'd think, well, I've got Gandhi to look forward to. Then, I looked in the mirror and thought: ‘He's crazy!' I'd sweat off the weight - agony! But I can't go through a year of macrobiotic junk. I can't do that! I enjoy food. I enjoy living. I'd be impossible to live with. I mean, I would die! I called Dickie [Attenborough]: "It would be madness. I'll destroy your film. I won't be able to give you my best. I'll probably not live long enough.' He was very sweet about it. But if I had done it, it would have been an act of terrible vanity, proving I can cosmetically change myself and lose 10 stone and end up in a coffin. I would've died. I know that."

Albert Finney, Under The Volcano, 1984. “Decided to take Bligh in The Bounty. I knew him better and preferred Tahiti to Mexico.”

Peter Firth,Lifeforce, 1984.

Richard Burton, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1984. Director Michael Radford fought hard to film the Orwell classic in the author’s chosen time span - April-June 1984. Even then, Radford was six weeks into shooting before finding his interrogator, O’Brien. “Burton was always on the list,” Radford told the Den of Geek website, “but I didn’t really want a drunk around the place.” He tried Hopkins, Sean Connery, Paul Scofield, Rod Steiger. So Burton it was. In his final role. The picture is dedicated to him, even though one scene took him 41 takes to get right.

Michael Caine, Mona Lisa, 1985. “I’m not right for it.” More than 20 years later, Hopkins told Jay Leno he informed director Neil Jordan that Caine would be perfect the London mobster.

Timothy Dalton, The Doctor and the Devils, 1985. Producer Lawrence Schiller's plan when first winning rights to the 32-year-oldscript by Swansea’s Dylan Thomas, the self-styled Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive.

Raul Julia, The Threepenny Opera, 1988. Welsh or not, he worried about his singing voice - and about film's backers.The dreaded Cannon!

Denholm Elliott, A Murder of Quality, TV, 1991. Obviously, Alec Guinness was asked to reprise his definitive George Smiley for a third time – after the global tele-triumsh of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spyand Smiley’s People, Twice was evidently enough. Anthony Hopkins (from The Looking Glass War, 1969, also by John le Carré) also passed, disliking certain script changes. Elliott refused with three days to go as returning to the UK from Spain would have caused a heavy tax bill. What if we double your fee? Aha! And Elliott became the fourth Smiley after Rupert Davies, James Mason and Guinness; Gary Oldman was fifth in the cinema- Tinker Tailor in 2011. Alas, this Quality was strained (no espionage, you see) and was the last Le Carrébook made for TV until the brilliant Night Manager some 25 years later!

Gary Oldman, Immortal Beloved, 1994. “I’ve hated you for years,” director Ken Russell told fellow UK film-maker Bernard Rose. “I was going to make that movie. I had Anthony Hopkins: he even got into the costume...” Rose knew; whenhe inherited the project he tried to getHopkins, too.No way. Rose may have been Ken’s greatest fan, but hewas not Russell. “Sorry if I pinched Immortal Beloved off you,” Rose told his idol in 2008. “Anyway, it got terrible reviews."

Michael Caine, On Deadly Ground, 1994. What?! With Steven Seagal directing himself? That was an obvious insult for Hopkins and Alan Rickman. But Caine… He must have had another house to buy...

Robert Duvall, The Scarlet Letter, 1995. Like Daniel Day-Lewis who refused to be Demi Moore’s lover, Hopkins knew manure when he sees it and likewise avoided her husband - played by Duvall, said Chicago critic Roger Ebert, “as if he'd never had sex in his life and didn't want anybody else to partake, either.”

Patrick Stewart, Richard III, 1996. Ian McKellan’s first choice for Buckingham, but funding took so long, Tony was playing the US version - Nixon.

George Segal, The Mirror Has Two Faces, 1996. Director and star Barbra Streisand wanted Tonyand Ralph Fiennes backing her and Jeff Bridges in her (sort of) re-make of Michele Morgan's 1958role.

David Huddleston,The Big Lebowski, 1997. In his making-of book, ex-Coen Brothers assistant Alex Belth said the titular casting of the fat, wheelchair-bound Pasadena tycoon(Jeff Bridges was the son, remember) was among the final decisions made before shooting. The Coens aimed high - Marlon Brando! - then chewed through Hopkins (not keen on playing Americans), Ernest Borgnine, Robert Duvall (not seduced by ther script), Andy Griffith (great idea!), Gene Hackman (on a break), author Norman Mailer, George C Scott, the longtime right vleft political adversaries William F Buckley and Gore Vidal…. And even the arch conservative Bible thumping televangelist Jerry Falwell!

Tony Curtis, Brittle Glory, 1996. While plugging away forinternational sales of his film,then called The Continued Adventures of Reptile Man and His Faithful Sidekick Tadpole, at the 1995 Cannes festival market, writer-director Stewart Schill insisted other actors who showed interest in being old caped TV hero on hard times included Hopkins, Harvey Keitel and John Malkovich.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Batman & Robin, 1996.

Jonathan Pryce, Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997.

Jeremy Irons, Lolita, 1997. Adrian Lyne felt Tony too old at 60 - just as Hugh Grant was way too young at 35. Irons was 49.

Geoffrey Rush, Les Miserables, 1997.“Javert is just too unrelenting,” Hopkins told me in Paris. He much preferred the fun of The Mask of Zorro, 1998. Didn't we all!

Michael Caine, The Cider House Rules, 1998. Hopkins and Billy Crudup were early choices for the abortionist and the orphan in the greatly delayedfilm of John Irving’s 1985 novel - winning Caine his second support Oscar.

Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast, 2000. Kingsley re-launched his career and image asan explosive London gangster far from his usual reverential, not to say boring roles - based, so he said, upon his granny

Robert De Niro, Meet The Parents, 2000. It’s just possible that Hopkins could have been a more frightening father-in-law than De Niro. Remember: “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”

Marcel Iures, Hart's War, 2001. Big break for the Romanian actor when Tony passed on the cameo of the German commander of POWs like Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell.

Ian McKellen, The Lord of the Ringtrilogy, 2001-03.

Terence Stamp, The Haunted Mansion, 2003. He’d buttled, already... And had no wish to look like Boris Karloff – Terry Stamp’s fate after some nifty Rick Baker make-up for the “specrtretacular.” The film, first due in 1985, was named after, rather than based on the Disneyland ride. Eddie Murphy, however, is no Johnny Depp.

Hugh Grant, Love Actually, 2003. In one of the (too) many Richard Curtis love stories, the bachelor UK Prime Minister falls for the 10 Downing Street’s tea-lady. Who should be elected as PM? Hopkins was shooting The Human Stain in Quebec (and he’d already played two US Presidents!). Michael Crawford was back on Broadway. Michael Gambon was Harry Pottering, Result: Grant all but stole the movie! Result: Grant stole the movie in a landslide victory.

Jonathan Pryce, The Brothers Grimm, 2005. Originally due as General Delatombe, Napoleon’s man in his occupied Germany, 1811. Gilliam simply called up his 1985 Brazil star.

David Kelly, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, 2004. Tim Burton is so quirky. Hannibal Lecter as Grandpa Joe! Burton had a dozen possibilities (two passed before passing, Gregory Peck, Peter Ustinov) and he gave it to the veteran Irish actor (“in three minutes,” said Kelly) on running into him at Pinewood studios for a costume fitting for another film. The other old guys were Richard Attenborough, Kirk Douglas, Christopher Lloyd, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Paul Newman, Max von Sydow, Eli Wallach, David Warner.

Marlon Brando, Superman Returns, 2006.

Ed Harris, Copying Beethoven, 2006. The biopic was designed for Hopkins, who backed out just as he had with a previous Beethoven offer - Immortal Beloved, 1994.

Christopher Plummer, The Last Station, 2009. Following Anthony Quinn’s death in 200l, Hopkins was the next choice for Tolstoy in the long and winding road of bringing Jay Parini’s novel about the writer’s deathto the screen - 18 drafts over 20 years. “I found myself wrapped in extended real-life version of Zorba,” said Parini, “loving Tony Quinn as a friend, but increasingly uncertain about the versions of my novel that we generated.”

Jesse Eisenberg, The Double,2012. Seventeen years earlier,Roman Polanski had great trouble trying to film the Dostoievski taleof aman faced with his doppleganger and total opposite: confident, charismatic, good with women.(Last made by Bertolucci as Partner, 1968). John Travolta turned his back on $8m (and Paris) in June 1995. Hopkins had no time (booked for Nixon, Picasso, etc). Jack Nicholson, A lPacino weren’t keen. Steve Martin was but the project collapsed when Isabelle Adjani quit followed by Polanski.Jesse (just 12 at the time) finally made it in London for actor-director Richard Ayoade.

John Travolta, The Life and Death of John Gotti, 2016. While Gotti Juniors, writers, directors (Nick Cassavetes, Barry Levinson) and years sped by, Travolta remained literally The Teflon Don - as Gotti Sr, was known when the untouchable ruler of New York’s Gambino Mafia family. (Much earlier, the part had been rejected by Hopkins and Al Pacino).